Sherriff reveals how war has changed Stanhope through the perspectives and opinions of other characters. In the beginning, Stanhope is presented as a young but effective commander struggling under the psychological damage of war, shown through his drinking and lost control. As the play continues, Sherriff depicts Stanhope further losing control of his actions and emotions, threatening to shoot Hibbert. However, in the end, Sherriff shows Stanhope's more caring side as he comforts the injured Raleigh, revealing the fatherly role war has prevented him from having and foreshadowing his own impending death.

1. How is Stanhope presented by Sherriff? How does Sherriff
revealhow war has changedhim?
At the start of Act One, before we have even met him, Sherriff presents
Stanhope as a character who is full of contradictions. He does this by using
dramatic irony, presenting the audience with lots of information and strong
opinions about Stanhope, from the other characters. Hardy, who is the
highest-ranking character on the stage, says that “he’s by far the best
company commander we’ve got”. The ambiguous use of ‘we’ here could
suggest that Stanhope is one of the most effective and heroic soldiers in the
British army. However, Sherrif’s stage directions point out the ‘despite his
stars of rank he is no more than a boy’, which implies that he is young and
vulnerable. Hardy has already referred to Stanhope ‘drinking like a fish’ and
shortly after, Osborne tried to explain why this might be, talking about how ‘his
nerves have got battered to bits.’ The word ‘battered’ is violent, with plosive
sibilant sounds, and it is also closely related to the word ‘battle.’ Here Sherriff
starts the play by creating sympathy for Stanhope, and clearly showing his
youth, and establishing the war as the cause of Stanhope’s drinking.
When Raleigh arrives, however, we get another portrayal of Stanhope: that of
a schoolboy hero who was brave and strong enough to be ‘skipper of rugger.’
Raleigh seems to have been influenced by the propaganda about the war that
was being directed at young people like him at the time. He sees Stanhope as
someone to look up to; he is particularly impressed by his rank, saying ‘I say, I
suppose I ought to call him Captain Stanhope?’ He also reveals himself later
to be blind to Stanhope’s terrible temper. After he has given Raleigh a very
cool reception, he still writes home at the end of Act 2 to tell his sister that
‘he’s the finest officer in the battalion, and the men simply love him.’ Here the
audience feel intensely sorry for the innocent, vulnerable Raleigh. In Act 1,
Sherriff has told us enough about Stanhope’s nerves (how he ‘lost control’
while they were on leave; then ‘sort of – came to – and cried…’) for us to
know that the war has caused him serious psychological damage.

2. Later in Acts 2 and 3, Sherriff continues to show us Stanhope losing control.
When Hibbert tries to claim he is ill, Stanhope calls him a ‘swine’ and a ‘worm’
and threatens to shoot him for desertion. This is not sympathetic action, and
the audience might begin to harden against him, in spite of all he has been
through. His choice of words to describe Hibbert is almost snobbish, as if
Hibbert was a lower class of being (as both pigs and worms are animals that
are associated with dirt.) Here, perhaps, Sherriff is hinting at the kind of
snobbery a grammar-school background can create, even in an otherwise
positive character. Later in the act, when Osborne has died, Sherriff reveals
Stanhope’s loneliness, when he says Osborne was ‘the one man I could talk
to as man to man.’ The repetition of ‘man’ here shows Stanhope’s obsession
with masculinity and manhood, and perhaps hints that this is one reason he is
finding war so hard – he is expected to be brave and strong by his fellow
soldiers.
Finally, at the end of the play, Sherriff reveals Stanhope’s more caring side.
This is particularly effective as the audience have been waiting for Stanhope
to behave in a caring manner towards Raleigh for the entirety of the play.
When Raleigh is injured and Stanhope refers to him as ‘Jimmy’ this signals a
shift in their relationship. Perhaps Sherriff leaves this until now to show how
they have finally cast of the stereotypes they’ve used to see each other (the
war hero and the innocent schoolboy) and started to see each other as
people. This is effectively tragic, because shortly after this line, Raleigh dies.
The last action we see him undertake on stage is when he ‘lightly runs his
fingers over Raleigh’s tousled hair.’ Here Sherriff successful hints at the
caring father that Stanhope might have been, and leaves the audience angry
at the war that forced him to try and be a stereotypical brave soldier: the war
that must surely kill him as the play finishes with a direct hit to the dugout.